forum Weekend At the Overlook CLOSED (3/3)

Started Feb 08 by @korixkj

tune

Chris spent his day researching various things.

(Idk what to say he found- 😭)

Chris researched, and found a few older missing persons cases, as well as comparing the picture he had gotten of the white sap to actual norway maple's sap.

Al and Simon returned relatively soon, coming back with nothing but the sample. Al handed him the bag with a disappointed smile, the kind he saw often when thy found little evidence. "This is all we got man"

Ama looked over to it. "Is that.. candle wax? Mom uses lots of white candles, the wax looks just like that." She commented, from her spot nearby. Laural looked up as well, nodding.

Al nodded. "I think it is.. I use vanilla candles in my rituals, and it looks just like it. I wasn't gonna touch it with my bare hands, though" Al was a pagan witch, who the group knew to perform various warding, cleansing, and protecting rituals- something she did multiple times per excursion. She'd done for each room when they arrived. "We brought a sample because we know Chris has the proper gear. Like gloves" Simon half-jokingly chimed in

(heeyy! I'm wiccan lol)

(Me too!!!)

Chris put on gloves and huffed, looking closer at the 'sap/wax', breaking off a peice and putting it above a lighter to see if it was, in fact, wax.

Joseph huffed and took off his shoes, frowning at the dirt on them. To which Chris chirped, without looking up, "your gay is showing".

Al chuckled "Real bad" she chimed in. Simon smiled apologetically at Joseph for his close friend. Simon knew better than to discourage Al's teasing unprompted, lest it be directed toward him

Laural watched as the 'sap' melted in the same way wax would. She frowned, grabbing a glove and holding her (now gloved) hand under the dripping wax. When it hit her hand, she pulled it away and watched it harden again. "Definitely wax."

Chris wrote this down in his notebook, the page had been empty this morning and now was full with every little thing he found even remotly related.

Joseph rolled his eyes at the two and clung to Simon, "Si-! Protect me from these hethens…laural and Ama are fine, but they other two are so mean" he joked, being dramatic and aloof now that it was just them in the room.

Simon chuckled and held Joseph in a playfully protective manner. "Chris Ward and Allanah Foreman! Stop being mean to him" He jokingly lectured. Al stuck her tongue out and gave him a thumbs down. "Homos" She said. She enjoyed teasing them about being a gay couple-though they weren't- as though she wasn't a lesbian

Ama giggled. "Simon used your full names! Your in trouble now!"
Laural smiled slightly at the joking, while also bringing the bit of wax in her hand up to her nose to sniff it. "The wax is unscented, except with maybe a little bit of a tree scent. Probably from being outside." She commented.

Joseph, being only two inches taller than Simon, just rested his chin on the others shoulder, "my knight in shining armor, how ever will I repay you"

Chris rolled his eyes, smiling, but also trying to focus on working. The wax in the middle of the woods was strange to say the least.

Simon simply held the other boy, content with not letting go until he pulled away. "Tis just my duty, young prince" He joked
Al turned her attention back to Laural and Chris. "Most likely." She then remembered that the majority of lighting in this place was candles on the wall. "Wait- Laural, can you see if she brought a candle out there with her? That'd be a weird thing to do, but it'd explain the wax"

Laural nodded. "Sure! I can text her aunt." She said. To the aunt, she sent 'We may have found a lead, do you know if she brought a candle out on the trail that day? We found some white candle wax."

Camille responded negatively almost immediately.

Laural shook her head. "No candles on the trail that day."

Joseph juat clung to Simon, not really paying attention to the conversation.

"So the wax came from somewhere else. Assuming it wasnt there before, then its likely connected" Chris mused.

Al nodded. The four had totally tuned out the boys, allowing them their moment while they focused on the task at hand. "I brought some of my candle-making stuff, so I can melt some of that, and some of the hotel candle wax and compare them. Waxes tend to have concrete consistencies with the candle they came from" She offered. Simon silently held Joseph, enjoying the moment more than the other probably knew

Laural poked the wax in her hand. "That would work. Drop some one my hand next to this glob, so they are super close." She suggested.

Chris hummed and got out a magnifying glass, setting it beside his laptop before going to write their observations so far in his notebook.

Joseph is just oblivious and happy.

As is Simon.
Al bustled over to her side of the room, pulling her wax kit from her suitcase. She then put on gloves, stating "The oils from my hands could change the consistency" before walking out into the hallway, grabbing a candle off the wall and returning, gently peeling the now-cooled wax off of Laural's glove. She took the lighter in her pocket out, holding it under the foreign wax first, letting it drop onto the glove, followed by the candle wax. She put her lighter away before taking small quantities of each on each of her index fingers, rubbing them against her thumbs. "..They're different" She concluded

Ama came up, her keen eye watching. "That one is a different color.. it's… Vaguely peachy- almost like a tan marker, or… Well, I mean…" She said, holding up her arm. The wax from the trail was similar in color, just a lot lighter. "The color almost looks like skin mixed with white.."

"Now thats suspicous and gross-" Chris muttered as he wrote, his notes being a jumbled mess at this point.

Joseph dragged Simon over to the bed and sat down, tired of standing but still wanting to cling to the other.

"Thats f**kin nasty" Al stated plainly, kneeling beside her bed to put her wax kit away, adding the hotel candle to her personal collection

Simon went willingly, sitting beside Joseph and holding him close. He normally would've jokingly chastised Al for her routine habit of collecting hotel items, but he was far to invested in the other to even register she was doing it

Laural watched the two guys carefully. She trusted them, but she wasn't sure they'd remember there was a child in the room if they got too comfortable with one another. About the wax, she compared the colors and gagged. "What the hell? That's . Really worrying."